What we’re up to…    

NCDD is running, involved in, and supporting a variety of projects to help advance the rapidly-growing dialogue and deliberation community.

• Upcoming Programs We’re Co-Sponsoring or Supporting
• Current NCDD Projects

Also check out our partners’ upcoming trainings – all of which are discounted significantly for NCDD members who have paid the (optional) membership fee.

Special Project of Note

Public Engagement Principles (PEP) Project

From mid-February through April 2009, NCDD (in collaboration with IAP2, the Co-Intelligence Institute, and others) led this bold attempt to develop a set of Core Principles for Public Engagement most of us involved in the fields of public engagement, conflict resolution, and collaboration can get behind. Dozens of people and organizations got involved in critiquing and composing the Core Principles, and most leading organizations in our field of practice have endorsed the document. Check out the Core Principles, endorsers, and background information at www.thataway.org/pep, and consider endorsing yourself!

Programs We’re Co-Sponsoring or Supporting…

The Democracy Communications Network

The Democracy Communications Network is a new collaborative effort to raise awareness about the central role people can and are playing in decision-making and problem-solving. A group of leaders in public engagement (including AmericaSpeaks, the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, Everyday Democracy, the Kettering Foundation, NCDD, Public Agenda, and others) recently launched the Democracy Communications Network, in an attempt to:

• coordinate PR efforts (op-eds, blogging, articles, etc.) in response to current events
• develop simple, compelling language to describe public engagement work
• make widely available helpful tools for writing compelling op-eds, working with newspapers, writing for blogs, etc.
• keep track of the blog posts and op-eds that are written, so that others can be inspired by those examples
• raise the visibility of the work we all are doing

Learn more about this important initiative, or email if you’d like to get involved.

Current NCDD Projects…

Community News & Perspectives Blog
The world of dialogue & deliberation is expanding rapidly, and NCDD has been keeping tabs on what’s going on and what opportunities YOU can take advantage of for years now on our blog. Edited by the lovely Amy Lang and contributed to by a small group of the coolest bloggers around, our dynamic blog is updated almost daily. Email to submit announcements or to join the blogging team.

Supporting New Coalitions for D&D

Although NCDD has over 100 members from outside the U.S. and welcomes more, we recognize that we are not fully equipped to meet many of the needs of D&D practitioners, researchers, activists and others from outside the U.S. For this reason, we are committed to supporting non-U.S. D&D coalitions and networks that others initiate.

Our programs and offerings have inspired a similar Coalition to form in Canada, and an African coalition is starting to develop. Others from Germany and England have approached us about possible D&D Coalitions in those countries. Learn more.

Guidebook to Dialogue & Deliberation
NCDD is producing a small easy-to-use guidebook that will introduce people to the range of dialogue and deliberation methods that are available to them, and help them decide when to use which method. We plan to publish thousands of copies of the guidebook and make them widely available to the D&D community and others in order to help promote dialogue and deliberation.

The draft guidebook is online at http://www.thataway.org/index.php/?page_id=952, and we strongly encourage you to look it over and add comments about what you think should be changed, added, or taken away.

Affinity Groups and Regional Networks
NCDD runs discussion lists for several affinity groups, including those interested in higher education, those new to D&D, and those looking into “making a living in D&D.” We also have discussion lists for D&D folks in Northern California, and those based in Colorado. Learn more or subscribe to these lists.

The NCDD Members Network also offers a way for members to create unlimited affinity groups as well, and we launched the network with dozens of groups. Based on where they lived, members were added to 15 regional groups. Members can also join 14 interest-based groups – including groups based on streams of practice (deliberative democracy, conflict resolution, etc.), groups based on the type of work a member does (research, whole system processes, etc.), and others. Join NCDD to participate in these groups.

We encourage NCDD members to form their own local networks. Let us know if you are interested in this – or if you’re already doing it – so we can see how NCDD may be able to help (). We list regional/local networks in our Learning Exchange, and would love to add more and encourage our members to get involved!